CrossWalk America embraces no particular political ideology, and seeks to explore and articulate the theological principles behind both faith and politics from a distinctly moderate/progressive Christian perspective. While our organization is joyfully and unapologetically Christian, we welcome the participation of Christians and non-Christians alike, from all walks of life.

Religion

04/05/2010

Jesus looked at him and loved him. "One thing you
lack," he said. "Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor,
and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."

Mark 10:21 - NIV

Once upon a time I received some very puzzling advice. I was
meditating on Mark 10:21 and a pastor told me that the verse did not mean that
I had to be poor to follow Jesus. At the time both the pastor and I believed in
a literal interpretation of the bible. Then those words seemed to be aimed
directly at me personally. Today, even with a different understanding
(non-literal) of the bible I am still confused about the incident and somewhat
perplexed. I am confused about both how anyone that believed in a literal
interpretation of the bible would not take those words literally and why I did
not sell everything I owned to follow Jesus. I certainly wanted to follow
Jesus. What is clear to me is that I made a choice.

A year or so earlier I had had a different kind of
conversation with that same pastor. It was in 1953 and I was either 11 or 12. This
conversation had to do with the meaning of “fornication”. This being the
fifties it took my pastor some time to explain that it was sex between people
not married. In this case the bible was dead against it. Of course, as a
Christian, I would never even consider fornicating – so my pastor told me. Here
the only choice was to refrain or not. No mention was made of what gender was
acceptable for me to fornicate with. That was just as well since even at 11 I
knew that my choice of sexual partners was limited to females. Please note that
the bible in which I found “fornication” in was a King James Version. I
searched the NIV in vain for it doing this post. The conversation probably would not happen today unless the pastor was one that insisted on the King James
Version.

“Choice” is a word used often in the public debate about
homosexuality. That is especially true in the portion of the debate about
marriage and ordination (or in some circles - are all homosexuals going straight
to hell?). In the Magazine section of the New York Times online the article, Can Animals be Gay, raised some
fundamental questions for me about choice as well as others that challenged my
pre-conceptions. A nesting group of Albatross in Hawaii is
described (in Can Animals be Gay) in which one third
of the nesting pairs are both female. The article points out that there has
been an assumption by all of the biologists (and other scientists) observing
albatross (yes, and all other animals as well) that when you saw a pair it was
composed of one male and one female. Not so. It turns out that even people like
Laura Bush have been fooled (Laura
had praised this same colony of Albatross
for being extremely monogamous).

The monogamous nature of Albatrosses – they mate for
life -apparently also holds for the pairs composed of two females. Except...
Sometimes one of the eggs laid by a female couple is fertile. Hmmm.

If I still believed in a literal interpretation
of the bible I would be tempted to ask a question. Do you suppose that the
reason that only (Albatross)
females nest together is that the bible (and hence God) only prohibits male
homosexuality? Not believing in a literal interpretation, I have a question for Laura Bush. Do you still think that it is great that the Albatross colony is so monogamous?

10/02/2009

Hi, and welcome! I'm Howie Howard, and I recently accepted an invitation to blog here. I'm a member of St. Peter's United Church of Christ in Kansas City, Missouri, veteran of the CrossWalk America blog, musician, cook, Student Advisor for a two-year college, and I continue to be surprised to find myself on a journey of faith, perhaps like many of you.

That's probably enough background; my hope is that we'll get to know each other better through the mini- study-and-reflection process I plan to bring to the blog. I have more questions than points to make, so generally I'll post a link with some quotes, and prompt you with a series of questions that you might use to comment on, for your own journaling elsewhere, or for something else entirely. Away we go!

"A few years from now, you'll be mortified to be seen with us in public. But yesterday you gave us both big hugs without hesitation, and even consented to having your picture taken in your new back-to-school outfit.

"We've worked hard to give you a world that makes sense. You're going to start to see that some of the world doesn't make sense. Some kids will be mean just to be mean. Sometimes you'll have to do things that don't make sense, just because someone else thinks they do. Sometimes bad things happen, even when you're being good. It's a hard lesson, but you're a strong girl. You'll get through it. We'll help as we can. And maybe, if we're really lucky, you'll never stop being a little bit shocked at some of the meanness you'll see. You'll carry with you the emotional memory of living in a world that makes sense, and use your incredible strength to recreate that for others."

I read InsideHigherEd.com almost daily for industry knowledge and fun, and the Dean's "Confessions..." blog is a regular highlight on both fronts. The second paragraph quoted above, from the larger post, stood out to me at a whole new level.
For conversation and reflection:

The Dean implies the world may not make sense, unless we receive a gift of sense-making. How do you see the world in terms of sense? What gifts have you received that helped you understand our world? What gifts have you lacked?

What does the phrase "makes sense" mean for you?

How has your family (or friends, or community) shaped your view of the world in terms of sense? What parts of their worldview have you internalized subconsciously? Affirmed consciously? Rejected?

Do you know anyone who has never stopped "being a little bit shocked at some of the meanness" in the world? How does it feel to be with them? Why do you think they're that way?

I love the idea of carrying "the emotional memory of living in a world that makes sense." Do you carry a similar memory? If you've taken care of children, is this an experience you think is important to provide? How do you think the experience of living in a world that makes sense in early childhood would affect the person as s/he grows up?

What are the implications of your responses for the life of a local church?

09/19/2009

For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God
rather than burnt offerings.

Hosea 6:6, NIV

All week I have been thinking about my last post, Problems
with being Christian which was about loving the enemies of my country. Loving
my enemies is not the only Christian ethic I have problems with following. For
me the idea of loving my enemies is closely bound to that of having compassion
- mercy. Matthew has Jesus quote Hosea 6.6 twice in addition to stating that the
merciful will receive mercy. And then there is the parable of the debtor that
does not show mercy – and is rebuked for it.

As with the enemies of my country I am unsure how to apply
this to the enemies of society. There is for example Susan Atkins aka Sadie Mae
Glutz. She was refused
parole again – for the 13th time. Susan is serving a life
sentence for killing Sharon Tate in August of 1969. She did so because (in her
words) “believed Charles Manson was Jesus”. She has since (according to
reports) found the real Jesus. The crime was horrendous, Susan was for a long
time unrepentant, and she has related how she showed Sharon Tate no mercy. Are
those enough reasons not to show her mercy? She has only one leg, the other is
paralyzed and she is also dying of brain cancer. She surely is not going to
repeat her crime. What difference would it make to release her – other than she
would not need guards to watch her die.

I cannot imagine that
Susan is the same person that she was as a 21 year old follower of Charles
Manson forty years ago. Neither can I imagine how it is to hold all that hate
and anger for someone for that length of time. But maybe I would feel the same
if it had been a member of my family that had been so brutally killed.

Unlike Susan, Michael
Eubanks of Huston Texas was shown mercy. He too killed someone - - when he
was young (20) for drugs and money. He hit a man with a sledge hammer and then
strangled him. He was paroled from a Texas this past July after spending 30
years behind bars for the killing.

I found it strange that Michael was granted parole in a
state not noted for mercy while liberal California rejected one in which
compassion is so obviously lacking. According to the article, Prison
release is the first surprise of many, in the last 14 years 2000 lifers
(for capital murder) have been eligible for parole in Texas. Three percent of
those have been granted parole. Larry Teague (the man Michael slew) was an
apartment maintenance man and his relatives did not attend the trial.

Susan Atkins had many supporters testifying about why she
should be granted parole but the feelings of the family prevailed. I wonder if
Michael Eubanks would have been granted parole if the sister of his victim
still carried as much hate as Sharon Tate’s. But maybe that isn’t the difference.
Sharon Tate and the others that died at the hands of Manson’s followers were
better connected socially. And there is another difference. The former district
Attorney, Carol Vance, who helped prosecute Michael, did not write a book about
the murder. Instead he teaches one of the Christian exit courses that Michael
took before he left prison. Everyone, except me, has read Helter Skelter.

09/12/2009

I have always been bothered by some of the teachings of
Jesus as recorded in the gospels. One of the most difficult is the one about
how we are to treat our enemies. It seems to run counter to our very nature. At
least my nature. I am a lot more in tune with the Old Testament law of an eye
for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Sometimes an eye or tooth is not enough to
satisfy my anger or my hate. An encounter with the words “Love you enemies!”
always leaves me with questions. Was Jesus referring to personal enemies only?
Should enemies that harm my country be included? Yesterday was 9/11. We paused
to remember all the victims of that day and curse those who caused the death of
so many. It seems to me that the cursing runs counter to “loving” my enemies.
Still I don’t know that I am willing (or able) to forgive and “love” those
responsible. The ones that executed the plan are dead which tempers my judgment
a bit. My desires for retribution are apparently shared by many. There was
another example of long ago terrorism in the news recently with the theme of
forgiveness and compassion.

Abdel
Basset Ali al-Megrahi was released from a Scottish prison last month and
that set off a firestorm of protest in the US and in the UK - you can read
about it here
or here.
Abdel was convicted of bombing Pan Am Flight 103 which exploded over Lockerbie
Scotland in 1988. He continues to proclaim his innocence. He also (reportedly)
is in the terminal stages of prostate cancer. That was the ostensible reason
for his release. What the true facts are has been obscured by politics, charges
and counter charges. I am not really upset about Abdel’s release. I did sort of
wonder about the hero’s reception that he received when his plane landed in Tripoli.
I am not sure how I would feel if I were a family member of one of those that
died either in the plane or on the ground in Lockerbie.

I do know how I feel about the release of Abdurrahman al
Shubati from Guantanamo. He was sent to Guantanamo in the war on terror. Four
months ago he was ordered released by a federal judge for lack of any evidence.
He is still there, still in a cell. I don’t like the idea of a military prison
in Guantanamo for civilians under any circumstances. It was a terrible idea to
establish a prison on Cuban soil (Guantanamo is only leased from Cuba and is a US
Navy base) and not on US soil. It was done specifically to lessen oversight by
anyone other than the government which is flawed to start with. Another flaw
was imprisoning people there with little or no evidence. And that is why the
lack of oversight is important. Keeping someone ordered released by a federal
judge is not only immoral but counter to everything our constitution stands for.
But this post is about forgiveness, compassion and loving your enemies. Where
is that in this story? It is the way Abdurrahman’s relatives relate to his
(pro-bono) lawyer.

They tear up and get very emotional and they make these
expressions of gratitude that are almost embarrassing.

I assume a couple of things that the article does not give
details about. One is that Betsy Haws is Mormon (she went to Brigham Young
University) and that the ones being grateful are Moslems (they are Yemini). The
article does make clear that they harbor no resentment for Betsy regardless of
our government’s actions. Or because she is (presumably) a Christian.

I wonder if the true facts of Abdel’s case will
ever be known. Was he responsible for the bombing? Was he released for
compassionate reasons or was it a political deal with Libya?

09/07/2009

I have a CD set, Masters 1949-1976, of music by Tennessee
Ernie Ford. Last week when I was playing it I was reminded of my theology
when I was a teenager. The song that brought it to mind was That’s
all. The lyrics pretty much sums up my theology of those days. I
am a United Methodist now but started out in my religious life rather more
evangelical. Sometimes refer to myself as a “recovering fundamentalist”. I have
in turns been an ‘independent’ Baptist, Lutheran, Southern Baptist,
Pentecostal, Episcopalian and finally a Methodist. I was 12 when “I gave my
life to Jesus” in the lingo of my first church. From the list of churches I
have attended you might be fooled into thinking that I was deeply religious and
spent most of my time contemplating spiritual matters. Or you might think that
I changed denominations and churches out of deeply held beliefs. Nothing could
be further from actuality.

I went to Goodyear
Heights Community church in Akron Ohio because my mother wanted me and my
brother out of the house for a week. The church had a summer camp that a
neighbor knew about. There were many churches closer to where I lived including
the Lutheran one in which I was later married. And that is how I became a
Lutheran. The Pentecostal and Episcopalian phases were equally life driven. All
through the many churches (there were several from each denomination) I kept
the basic fundamentalism that I learned as a preteen. It wasn’t that I didn’t
think about God and faith; I did. It was just that I couldn’t see anything
other than the basic ‘truths’ I had heard when I first started attending a
church. I also never heard anything in the churches I went to that contradicted
what I had been told was the teachings of the bible or of God. And of course I
never really thought about any of it in relation to the real world.

It is almost as if I was schizophrenic. When I was in school
learning about evolution, the age of the earth or any other subject that
contradicted what I believed was the inerrant word of God I placed that data in
the real world part of my brain. What I heard on Sunday went into the church
side. Occasionally, I did have questions when the two parts were in
disagreement but under the pressures of hormones at first and then the need to
support a growing family I managed to stuff the tensions. That lasted until the
early 1990s. Then life bumped up against my fundamentalist beliefs. Strangely
enough it was my beliefs about homosexuality that caused the problem. This was
really strange because other than believing that homosexuality was a mortal sin
I had no beliefs about it. Nor did I have any real world knowledge because that
subject wasn’t taught in any school I ever attended. The only thing life had ever
taught me about it was that “queers” wore green on Thursdays. This, despite my
high school Trigonometry teacher. He always wore green on Thursdays. He did
this specifically to refute that bit of street wisdom. God bless him!

But when I was in my 50s life came in the form of Gail who I
met at work. Gail is a lesbian which in itself wasn’t a problem. I knew a lot
of people that I believed were destined for hell. The problems came as I found
out that Gail and I were very much alike. We certainly shared a work ethic and
as we worked together I found myself liking her. Eventually I came to the
conclusion that there was something wrong in my thinking. How could someone
that I had so much in common with be destined for eternal punishment? If she
was, why wouldn’t I be? It took me a long time to understand that in not
believing Gail was evil (or an abomination) had put a crack in my
fundamentalist belief system. It was then that I started to think about what I
believed.

I was aided in the thinking part by starting to attend Asbury UMC. How could it not help
to have Jeff
Proctor-Murphy as a pastor? Having Tex Sample around was another
goad for thinking. It would be nice to be able to say that I first went to
Asbury because of the theology. I can’t. I went there because it was #10 on the
list of United Methodist Churches closest to where I live and I tried it first.
But maybe the reason I went back the next Sunday is better. I was so overcome
with emotion on seeing all the gay and lesbian couples going to the communion
table holding hands that I knew Asbury was THE place. It was a short distance
from there to CrossWalk America, the Phoenix Affirmations
and walking to Washington DC from Phoenix. All of which is what started me
blogging.

I am completely surprised that I have been doing this for
three years now (archived on Asphalt
Jesus with all other CrossWalk America posts after 15 September 2009). I
have finally figured out why I blog. You may have noticed that I am not the
quickest thinker around. Writing a blog forces me to think about what I believe
and perhaps more importantly why I believe what I do. The discipline of writing
about the connection between the world and my theology forces me to think about
that connection. My current theology is pretty simple. The Phoenix Affirmations
states it much more eloquently than I can.

I wonder what my thoughts on the subject would have been if
I had enough courage to talk to my trigonometry teacher about homosexuality.

05/12/2009

There were two articles in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle that I found of interest. The first, Irving’s Mr. B ends 21-year run, caught my eye because the “Irving” in the title was my school when I was in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th
grades. I found out some facts about Irving that I had been ignorant of
prior to reading the article. The school was built in 1938. That was
interesting. But not nearly as interesting as what the school was like
in 1988.

Hired as Irving principal in 1988, he inherited a school
with big challenges. Nearly a third of Irving’s students lived in
Montana State University’s married student housing, so many children
came from foreign countries or Indian reservations, some didn’t speak
English and many were poor. Enrollment was falling.

I lived in Montana State University’s married student housing.
My family was poor. That, however, is where the similarities end. When
I attended Irving in the early 1950s there were no children that came
from foreign countries or Indian reservations. Montana State University
was then Montana State College. Or, if there were, I did not know them.
It is nice to know that things had changed for the better. It felt good
reading about how a school I had gone to became inclusive and
celebrated the diversity that it found within itself. No, I am not
going to tell you about it, if you want to know about the contents of
the article you will have to click on the link in the title – or here.

Schweitzer said he signed HB531 “probably for the same
reason I was against the Patriot Act and Real ID.”…”Government will
always look for the easy way to monitor her citizens,” Schweitzer said.
“I think the citizens deserve some personal liberties, and I agree with
the Legislature. I don’t think Montanans want a bunch of cameras
looking at them.”

Let me see if I have this correct. Montanans deserve to have
liberty (personal) to violate the law when no police officer is around
to see them. This is the head of the executive branch (chief law
enforcement official) making this statement; it boggles the mind. Some
things never change. Some two thousand years ago in Judea they had
similar situations.

27 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you
hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the
outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything
unclean.

28 In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous
but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.”